A hundred moments in autism - Your mother's got a penis

Tory party conference, Blackpool 2004. 

I was a public affairs officer for a disability charity for ten years, and my role involved attending three consecutive weeks of party conference, culminating in a week with the Tories in an off-season Blackpool.

I was good at public affairs, I write and think fast, I’m detailed and thorough and can produce material for a wide range of audiences. My weakest point was smoozing, and conference season was three solid weeks of smoozing.

Parts of it I enjoyed - manning information stands, it’s a very controlled communication environment, you’re repeating the same opening message over and over. You’re also standing behind a table, which hides many of my non-verbal quirks. Nevertheless, it’s exhausting talking to hundreds of strangers over the course of the day, especially when they’re Tories.

What’s really draining though, is the ‘mingle’ events, when you’re in a room full of important people and your goal is to ‘connect’ with as many of these as possible. This is horrible for autists like myself, partly because the room is noisy so communication is reliant on non-verbal communication and small talk. The other major difficulty is that like many autists I can’t shut off conversations taking place around me.  It reminds me of the story of an autistic child who was taking a test in class, where the teacher read out questions and the student wrote down the answers. When their work was marked, the autist had answered all the questions, and all the questions from the completely different test taking place in the class next door.

It is an exhausting day, after two similarly exhausting weeks. I am overstimulated, overloaded, burnt out and exhausted. 

On my way from my hotel to the conference centre I had purchased the new Goldie lookin Chain album. When I get back to my room after a day of sensory overload, I collapse on my bed, don my Walkman, and play ‘Your mother’s got a penis’ on repeat play for an hour.

The constant repetition calms me, allows me to take back control after a day of constant overstimulation.  I stim along to the music.

After an hour or so I am calmed sufficiently to go to bed. The next day I will wake up to a repeat play of the day just gone. But thanks to Goldie Lookin Chain I am ready.